Drop caps and lead rot

Lead Rot: 1) Okay, use seven up then (it IS basic). Or lye.
;)

2) In further conversation with my father re: the car problem on the Ford's
joints, what seems to have happened is this: Lead was used in the car joints,
but it needed to be applied with some flux. And the flux was acidic (of a
particular type). And some of the solder contained tin. So we have tin, lead,
and a type of acid in one place.

Apparently how the factory dealt with this was that they washed down the joint
with muratic acid (yes, another kind of acid, but this one cleaned the joint
up of the original flux), perhaps (or perhaps not) rinsed, and then they
painted the joint with acrylic primer and then
paint. Using a non-acrylic primer would cause
grief.

Now, the interesting part of all this: Perhaps cleaning the figs in a light
solution of muratic acid then using acrylic primer would be the solution. (Now
I have to check if the Armoury Primer is acrylic based... I doubt it as it is
a spray bomb....).

Drop Caps:

John, TNE and the RCES was hardly the first incarnation of traveller to have
dropcaps. They started out IIRC in High Gaurd and have been propagated from
there.

And although I know the RCES description, I've got pictures in the GURPS
Traveller book of a group of Marines emerging from a landed
squad-sized capsule. So some land rather han
fall apart. (They have an excellent schematic of
a dropship for both grav APCs (VTOL/Interface
mobility) and dropcaps in Ground Forces).

Drop caps were meant to get your expensive PA and your even more expensive PA
troopers to the ground in one piece. They are a shock force, designed to hit
the beaches hard, as part of raids or assaults. Pathfinders, Commandos,
whatever.

Dropships OTOH (or interface capable APCs) allow you to land slower, but have
a mobile unit when you arrive with some support weapons and to execute casevac
and resupply.

I think someone pointed out that for X mass, you'd take some% as drop caps,
some% as landers or APCs so as to let you get troops in quick and safe (or as
much as possible) and to
also resupply/evac/exfiltrate/support them. That
seems to be a very sensible model.

Plus the dropcap also has one good argument: When I bring down a squad of 8 PA
down in my lander, I have 8 PA plus 2 crew. I have one expensive lander
(reusable, fancy avionics, bigger, etc), 2 very expensive ground attack
pilots, 8 expensive PA soldiers, and 8 suits of expensive PA in one place to
be killed by one attack. Dropcaps probably disperse the risk better.

T.